Paul Hardacre was born in Brisbane, Australia, in 1974. He is the Managing Editor of papertiger media (www.papertigermedia.com), publishers of the papertiger: new world poetry CDROMs and the ezine hutt (www.papertigermedia.com/hutt/). Paul was recently appointed as an editorial correspondent for Cordite (www.cordite.org.au). He has published poetry in journals and anthologies in seven countries, including Meanjin, Blue Dog: Australian Poetry, Fulcrum (USA), filling Station (Canada), vallum (Canada), Big Bridge (USA) and the recent Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry (Rattapallax, New York, 2002) and (Some from) DIAGRAM: An Anthology of Text, Art, and Schematic (Del Sol Press, Washington D.C., 2003). His first collection of poetry, The Year Nothing, was recently published by HeadworX (Wellington, NZ). His unpublished manuscript, Love in the place of rats, was recently shortlisted for the 2003 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. He is currently working on another poetry manuscript, The river is far behind us, for which he was awarded an Arts Queensland Major Grant. Paul currently lives and works in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

BMP12

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birth of the urban Aghora

(i) ‘the race of tall hunters’

“: with her heavy mass of dark hair her head seemed large, and because

of her diminutive breasts her body assumed a lank, almost childlike stance.

But her great eyes, with their elaborate lashes, could only be those of a

grown woman; there the resemblance to adolescence ended.”

- Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

followed down melbourne past southbank

september it starts with her slip which is green

& has patches & hillocks with pencil she knows

what is seen but is smiling with teeth or with breast

variations she asks me again ‘what’s your name?’

to be stranger / with plants in a shoebox the sickness

has jaws / the shallow pavilion amended description:

polaroid skin painted white like the magdalene bathroom

& fucked by a poet in black holds the sink or the tap with

her hands & their clan of tall sawdust with jean-michel’s

movers as wallpaper torn then a phone call in secret & the

detours at night when the streetlights are burning on similar

missions a curious feature her room & her savings the tree with

its faces & wind-up child doll by the galvabond mailbox drinks

moisture from bitumen bare-foot & desperate opens the door

to his shoulders the grape-vine / is spoken of / winds around an island

rock lighthouse nears hell’s gates in red sea to be true it’s august

& she needs to sleep in the afternoon waiting for footsteps or something

& shit is on everything she says not to wait on the stairs & he does that

with vodka & lemon & words on a leaf this is buried for three days &

hunting is over he listens to pumpkins / the emperor’s voice or

the living room carpet she sits on the bed in the monsoon is silent

& thinks of the phonecalls the painting which screams to them ‘ease me’

this romulus staircase this engine or season of fig trees

or magic land cut-out in red

(ii) 'of what clothes she would wear in –'

“She floats on an exuberant lid of water

Beneath, the roots tug dense and introverted

Blindness drills me in its tub”

- Gig Ryan, Compass and Map

& the dreams only matter at sunset

they say it's like sacred cord shoulder

bag 'me bebe' girls with their hands out

for pens or for rupee & maybe the morning

is better for candies or funeral pyre coals

which are bagged & then sold as a foodstuff

for necros & blind men & black dogs on assi

ghat she says she loves me & i know she

wraps herself nightly in white sheets & sews

the sky shut with her eyes with her specks &

the alcove she makes it all tea-lights & pills

from the pharmacist downstairs who lives

from a brown bag on trains on the footpath

& sold like a hole in the ground in calcutta

she watches the goats & the priest & his

kalighat chopper is sharp although rusted

the cutting is clean & the goats flip like

fish on the deck of a sunderbans riverboat

sunk by the tigers & bengali nonsense about

stroking the bell or the rock which feels lubed

that is too smooth for milk sweets in cobwebs

& lessened by kneaded by sailors this river

(iii) that which we call 'mother'

“i follow the gutter’s thread,

find clues of paper, a dead cat.”

- John Forbes, Nightwalker

we call it 'mother' & dare our feet to wash

in this river of the dead & swallows at dusk

make their plague make it biblical / bicycle spokes

& their shadows from ramnagar children play

cricket with bones of the king & his brass band

is threadbare to be kind like mummies from karloff

or hammer house flicks up at two & the ceiling fan

works but the concrete is cold-poured you know

like the water from pumps in the streets outside

newmarket chickens in baskets & tied from the

handlebars make only silence & feathers on stone &

the gutters are choked with the blood & the crows

& the footsteps of carpenters born of the clay

which is shaped & then dressed like a piece of

the blue child on postcards she writes like she paints

in the darkness we make it so unknown a circus with

blindfolds

(iv) the elite walk, the heart

“After a mother tortoise buries her eggs on a sandy beach it is said

that she retreats a certain distance and then concentrates on those

eggs with such an intense current of love that the warmth of her love

reaches the eggs and causes them to hatch.”

- Robert Svoboda, Aghora: At the Left Hand of God

& snow on the suitcase makes warm cans of lemonade

the faintest surprise as we practice with great-coats &

shoes & say ‘they want what we want’ like coffee in rome

or some bruce lee colosseum / blasts of head trauma worn

like tabloid death shots her dream is removed & haunts the

display case / clubs & a card-deck the trophy night speech

& gentle transition from in-flight elysium all in third person

she watches me walk down the lane can’t remember just

covered in blood of the goats or of she with the skin of

september the month before dransfield who wrote on monaro

the nature of passion & money is useless police ring my arm

like a bell only sounds have a meaning without her additional

giggles she studies the ghost of the aftermath lover just walking

the one room & sitting & staring at her seat the lino-cut panels

the tambourine photo when her head was big & the body so small

feeding turkeys & lizards her devonshire tea before scratching

the glass with those rice-paper fingers of spring street like sorcery

postcards of god made of brick & the new path she walks

(v) Cook’s thirsty turtle

“’They aren’t allowed funeral processions, the streets would be

crammed. They just dump the bodies in the river.’ Hiran thought

of the Ganga. All rivers were full of bodies.”

-Kunal Basu, The Opium Clerk

remove the blood from the pig photo &

all that’s left sleeping like chief tu’imalila

blinded in a bushfire now kissing her dampness

she points to the city & doom in the sky it is sunday –

a handful of darkness / cosmic puppets descend

in sheets over tail-lights & little man say ‘run!’

& he does for the love of his godchrist on lookout

for bevans with bullwhips / australian utility

uphill from fireworks or stooges & stab-wounds

& punky wants beak-tugs she cries out for fingers

the warlord from kuching responds with a laser-tube

chickenhead hospital slip & noiseless down laneways

near sunshine on paper the boatman a dancer no whisky

nataraja with four kids & school fees & so cold this river

the candles for family mother & father & guiltily brother

with nothing for ten years but a cat & some offspring

remember the hairspray or rusted red falcon the reasons

exported / enormous & hazel / bastille day at tuckshop

french onion & wireless of cheops & chephren the moslems

at giseh eat dirt like the pope & the camel named ‘rebel’

stands fixed in the foreground inspecting the guard & mother

with sun-dial / the crowd on the wharf like nativity grotto

the priest in a chamber where bearded the jesus was cradled

on lawn by memsahibs & uncle with cowboys & steam trains

he paints her aghora / the boons trick like nooses

from ‘The river is far behind us’ (parts 47 – 51)

get the guards or buy things the pixies

emerge he warps louvres mountains rocks whole trees leaves &

pine needles / digs

& notices ‘it is much bigger than expected’

(lovecraft / watches bad brains for free the roxy the red road some kind of